Yo La Tengo, back and better than ever, played their second show at the Metro Saturday night just a mere three months after their last in March celebrating the release of their brand new 17th studio album, This Stupid World. For what reason they came back with such haste I’ll never know, but it may have something to do with Metro celebrating their 40th anniversary; I can only wish Yo La Tengo will still be around when it’s time for my 40th and that they also do house calls.
I’m a relatively recent convert to the Yo La Tengo cult. This time last year, I had only ever heard their name in passing and was eventually shown the hits (”Autumn Sweater”, “You Can Have It All”, etc) but didn’t truly get into them until just recently when I came across their song “I’ll Be Around” in a pre-show playlist curated by The National on their Spotify. It’s been a fun past couple of months since then catching up with the hundreds of songs they’ve amassed through 17 albums, compilations, b-sides, and rarity releases. I must say that I’m rather embarrassed it took me this long to get into such a classic indie rock outfit as Yo La Tengo but I’m more glad that I was able to do it just in time for Saturday’s sold-out show!
They didn’t have an opener because Yo La Tengo needs no introductions besides maybe the faint dimming of stage lights and even that might be overkill. The show was split into two different sets plus a three-song encore with the first nine songs leaning heavily on their newest album, This Stupid World, and the second ten songs spanning their whole discography from 1993’s Painful to 2018’s There’s a Riot Going On. Being somewhat new to their work, I struggled to figure out the names of most of the songs even when I felt like I knew them but that never stopped me from writing a concert review before!
After walking on stage, Ira (guitar/vocals), Georgia (drums/vocals), and James (bass/vocals) quickly manned their respective battle stations and went immediately into the title track to their new album, “This Stupid World”, a rather long, droning, distorted, psychedelic meditation on this big ol’ stupid world of ours that we call home. It’s classic Yo La Tengo (whatever that even means at this point) and that song along with “Sinatra Drive Breakdown” made for a great jammy introduction to their set. The blissful acoustics of “Aselestine” gave us our first taste of Georgia’s beautiful vocals whilst behind her kit and I’m still shocked she sounded as good as she did while sitting down playing drums. My favorite song from the first set, and up there with my favorite song of the night, had James finally take the reins on vocals to give us a devastatingly immaculate performance of “Black Flowers” from I Am Not Afraid Of Your And I Will Beat Your Ass, one of my absolute favorite Yo La Tengo songs. Something about watching James sing and seeing his bandmates back him up as if he was confronting a bully at school was just so pure to witness. I’m not sure how many songs he usually sings on each record but whatever it is, it’s not enough. The band then went all the way back to 1995 with “The Ballad of Red Buckets” from Electr-o-Pura before ending their first set with “Miles Away”, my favorite track from their new album right next to “Aselestine” mainly because it just feels like the Yo La Tengo of the early 2000s, a band writing the most beautifully quaint and quiet melodies that just go on and on until they unfortunately end and you realize they didn’t go on quite long enough.
After a somewhat brief intermission, the gang came back to bless us with more musical stories of their past. Opening with “Here to Fall”, the first song from their album Popular Songs from 2009, the band wasted zero seconds getting into their signature brand of hellish distorted gaze that only continued with “We’re an American Band.” They played extended versions of both songs and normally I’m not a jam-band type concertgoer but I couldn’t help but fall in love watching Ira lose his mind acting like a reckless 20-something on stage flailing his guitar every which way; it was true catharsis. Having not played any songs from their 1997 classic I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One the last time they were at the Metro in March and with Ira starting the show promising that they’d play all the songs they didn’t the last time, they continued on with “Stockholm Syndrome”, a bonafide fan favorite from the album. “Stockholm Syndrome” was a song I knew I loved but I truly didn’t realize how much I loved it until that performance. Again, hearing and seeing James sing his heart out just hits differently; the way he approaches the songs he fronts just feels so much more emotionally powerful to me for reasons I’m not quite sure of but they may have to do with the blissful yet shaky timbre of his voice sounding so damn vulnerable in all the ways you need. “Shades of Blue” from There’s a Riot Going On had Georgia back up to the mic and even though its predecessor is a full 20 years older, somehow they didn’t skip a beat, which is just a testament to the insane longevity and intense talent of the band as a whole.
You’d think they’d play a song like “Autumn Sweater” every show considering it’s quite possibly their biggest song but Yo La Tengo is simply too unpredictable and experimental for those schoolyard shenanigans. However, seeing as it was a Saturday night and that we as an audience were behaving so respectfully, they gifted us the most wonderful of fall sweaters, and oh, how sweet it was! Some other grand setlist surprises included “Double Dare” from their incredible 1993 album Painful and “Ohm”, the opening track to their serene 2013 album Fade. Before the show, I wasn’t the biggest fan of “Ohm” but just like so many songs before it in the set, my mind and heart did a complete 180 and fell in love. Ira also did something I’ve never seen before at a show: he wildly and chaotically detuned his guitar all while violently strumming his open strings and then proceeded to just hand over his guitar to someone in the front row telling them to pass it on down the line. His guitar made it through the hands of five or six fans before he thought it was time for the next singalong but it was so wonderful to see the expressions on those fans’ faces looking like kids in a guitar and/or candy store with a $100 gift card and five hours to kill.
They ended their second set with the 12-minute epic of “The Story of Yo La Tengo” and went absolutely bananas. There was a point towards the end of the song where the tempo, distortion, and decibel levels skyrocketed into one of the most cathartic displays of emotion I’ve ever seen. It got to the point where Ira was just slamming his guitar against his body in an act of such utter devil-may-care physicality that it became hard to tell if he was trying to break his guitar in half or himself in half; either way, it was incredible and he made it out alive, thankfully.
After a second brief intermission, the gang returned and performed three covers for their encore starting with the one-two-punch of Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown” surprisingly juxtaposed with a quiet acoustic performance of “Farmer’s Daughter” by The Beach Boys. To cap it all off, they took us all the way back to their fourth studio album from 1990 entitled Fakebook with “Speeding Motorcycle”, a delightful cover of the Daniel Johnston original that is as cute as it is speedy.
Yo La Tengo just might be indie rocks quintessential band and I know I’m not the first to say it out loud but dammit, I love this band and I can’t wait for the next time I get to see them and experience an entirely new setlist. This may be a stupid world but hey, at least we have live music and fall sweaters to distract us and keep us warm.
All photos by Lorenzo Zenitsky